Sterte slipway, Holes Bay

The railway embankment carrying the South West Main Line divides Holes Bay into two basins. The northern basin, including the wooded Pergins Island, is a designated Bird Sensitive Area with no public access; the southern basin, where this launch sits, fronts the built-up Sterte shore. The bay's only way out to the rest of Poole Harbour is a narrow gat between Lower Hamworthy and Poole Old Town, past the RNLI lifeboat station and part of Poole Quay, under Poole Bridge and the newer Twin Sails Bridge, opened in 2012; vessels drawing more than two metres need the bridges lifted to pass.

Poole Harbour averages under half a metre deep, and Holes Bay drains to extensive mudflat and saltmarsh at low water. The bay lies within the Poole Harbour Site of Special Scientific Interest, Special Protection Area and Ramsar site, and its fringes were added to the SSSI in 2018 for their saltmarsh and wetland habitat. Holes Bay Nature Park, established in 2015, protects mudflats of international importance for wintering birds: around 25,000 winter across Poole Harbour as a whole, and a single count in September 2020 recorded 1,290 black-tailed godwit feeding on the mud of Holes Bay itself.